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Forum:Office Templates
We have POTUS, LoUSSR, PMOTUK. I think we can support MOnarchs of England, Monarchs of UK (and we can hash out whether that's worth splitting or not--I argue yes, since we split up the categories and countries), Monarchs of France (though there aren't enough PMs), and....Anything else? TR 21:27, July 9, 2010 (UTC) :German emperors, perhaps? We've got two of the three OTL ones, three from 191, three from CN. :Roman emperors, we've got a bunch. Popes we've got a handful though I'm sure they'd look none too impressive scattered among the 265 who have held that office, even when we feed in the two or three who didn't reign in OTL. Vice Presidents of the United States is surely worth doing if we've done Presidents. :As for British monarchs (I had already intended to do that myself) I'd argue we should use one template for English and British monarchs and put it into both categories. Reasons: That's how the Brits most frequently measure their own history; that's how the rest of the world most frequently measure British history; that's how British (and even other Commonwealth realms) governments number the monarchs (ie, Elizabeth II follows Elizabeth I, who served before the Crown Union and long before the Act of Union); and that would be one bad-ass-looking template when we had it all filled in. If we had a bunch of non-English/British monarchs of UK realms, that might change matters some, but we only have one Scottish monarch who wasn't also an English/British monarch, and maybe we could stick a line in there somewhere to put her. ::We've also got at least two ancient British monarchs, Arthur and Boudicca. Ethelburga of Lyming was the daughter of the ruler of one Saxon kingdom and the wife of the ruler of another but she never ruled a kingdom in her own right, I don't believe. And many's the Roman emperor whose empire included Britain, at least de jure. We could give them another line, or we could ignore them altogether. Turtle Fan 22:06, July 9, 2010 (UTC) I'd like to get cracking on British monarchs. Let's reach a decision as to whether we'll date it from 1066 or 1707. (Or 1603, I guess that might make some sense.) Turtle Fan 06:28, July 12, 2010 (UTC) :Let's do from 1707. I think we'll have more blue than black that way. 1603 would produce a similar result I suppose. Either/or. TR 19:05, July 12, 2010 (UTC) ::I took the liberty of verifying that claim. If we start our list with Anne, we'll have six black and six blue. If we start with James VI and I (the most arbitrary of the three options, I would submit), we'll have either nine and nine or nine and eleven, depending on what we want to do with those nasty Cromwells. If we start with William I we'll have either twenty or twenty-one blue and anywhere from twenty-two to twenty-six black. (We'd have to decide what to do with the Cromwells again, with Philip II of Spain, with Matilda and with Lady Jane Gray.) ::1707 gets us 50% of the OTL section blue, 1066 gets us somewhere in the high forties. I'd submit that difference is small enough that other concerns should be weighed. I'd ask what makes these templates useful and answer by saying that they provide links to as many related articles as possible. That's why we load all the various AH stories onto one, and it's also why the story templates tend toward the extensive and are attached to just about every article with, say, a TL-191 section, no matter how minor that section is. If we have to bend over backwards to manufacture relevance between two articles, the template's not serving its purpose, but if the relationship exists naturally--and I'd certainly submit that it does here--it's better to err on the side of inclusiveness. ::Also, the OTL line of the PMotUK template has far more black than blue, but it doesn't look bad and it's not at all inaccessible, at least not since I shortened everyone to a one-word name or title. Turtle Fan 21:06, July 12, 2010 (UTC) Sec of State (US) Picking up the thread begun by TF. I'm hesitant to get going on the Sec of State template based on numbers. There were 67 USSoS in OTL. We have only 13. We'd have an additional 7 ATL, but that's still a lot of names in black. And while it's an important office, those low numbers combined with the fact that the office is neither a head of state nor head of government...I'm not terribly "inspired" to cut and paste that template at this time. TR 06:23, July 11, 2010 (UTC) :All right, that's fine then. :Speaking of unwieldiness, there are fifty-three PMsotUK, and that's with me only putting non-consecutive office-holders up there once. I'm thinking of going back and doing a last-name-only thing on the OTLs to make it a little less unwieldy. Since a bunch of them are up by their titles of nobility instead of their name, it would improve consistency. I'd like to leave the ATLs as they are since those sections are much more manageable, but I suppose, for consistency's sake. . . . Turtle Fan 13:46, July 11, 2010 (UTC) Rules While we're here, did we want to codify a standard set of rules or guidelines on when a template should be created? Turtle Fan 14:03, July 11, 2010 (UTC) Germans I was thinking of suggesting we extend our German Emperors template into a German Leaders template so we could include later figures and make it more impressive. Then I concluded that most of the non-Emperor German leaders we had were Chancellors. There've been thirty-five in OTL, of whom we've got five: Otto von Bismarck, Adolf Hitler, Josef Goebbels, Karl Dönitz, and Konrad Adenauer. We've also got Hitler, Himmler, Kaltenbrunner, and Dornberger in Worldwar, and Hitler and Manstein in "RfTF." As I recall, in ItPoME the title had fallen into disuse. :Actually Donitz was President (head of state). And no Chancellors in ItPoME for whatever reason. TR 22:08, July 12, 2010 (UTC) ::Yeah? So was it Donitz as President and Goebbels as Chancellor? Strange that Hitler would divide in death an office he'd united in life. ::But then we know he got really loopy down in that bunker. I've seen hundreds of pieces of stock footage on YouTube showing him fly into horrible tirades over the strangest things. Windows 7? The World Cup? The new Star Trek movie? How would he even have known what any of those were? But the subtitles assure me that he did. Turtle Fan 23:10, July 12, 2010 (UTC) Is that enough? I suppose we'd have a hard time answering that until we decide what the rules relating to template creation are. Turtle Fan 06:28, July 12, 2010 (UTC) :The long list of ATL chancellors may justify the template. Certainly, position of German Chancellor counts for quite a bit in many HT works. ::A bit, yes. It would be nice if we had an ATL chancellor from a non-Nazi timeline, but then, you can't have everything you want, can you? Turtle Fan 23:10, July 12, 2010 (UTC) :We may also be justified in doing a catch-all German heads of state, starting with the Emperors, then listing presidents of the Weimar Republic, then Hitler and Donitz, then President of West Germany and HoS of East Germany. ::As we know, German reunification consisted of nothing more than West Germany's constitution being extended over East Germany and West German government officers packing their bags and moving to Berlin. From what I've seen of German historians, they tend to count West Germany as the successor state to the Kaiserreich, Republic, and Third Reich while treating East Germany as an aberration. Not unlike we would do if we wanted to create a comprehensive political history of the United States from 1776 on: Start with the Continental Congress, then the Articles of Confederation, and finally the government prescribed by the current Constitution, each government being the legitimate successor to the equally legitimate one before it. The CSA effectively controlled much of US territory for a time, so the forms and functions of its "government" are worth knowing, but it has no legality or legitimacy. ::I assume the West German constitution maintained it had sovereignty over all of Germany (at least what the Allies were willing to call Germany and not Poland or Belarus or France). I assume the East German constitution said the same thing, but fuck them, they lost. Turtle Fan 23:10, July 12, 2010 (UTC) :Actually, just thinking about all that kind of hurt my head. Let's refocus on the Chancellors. TR 22:08, July 12, 2010 (UTC) ::Yeah, really. That was my idea last night, and I thought we'd better circle the wagons around Kanzler for starters. And probably for finishers. We just don't have a lot of heads of state not counting the emperors. ::But should we do something for the Fuhrers? The ATL sections would each be much longer than the OTL section, but Fuhrer is a very important office in HT's work as well. POTCS is in the same boat. Turtle Fan 23:10, July 12, 2010 (UTC) Rules I'd argue that Heads of State/Govt are the highest priority. So we should be looking there first. :Sure. In fact I'm having a hard time thinking of what other offices would deserve one. Turtle Fan 21:06, July 12, 2010 (UTC) Next, I guess the proportion of blue vs. black. The POTUS was a no-brainer in no small part because we have articles on slightly more than half the OTL POTUS, plus a similar number of ATL POTUS. So it even "looks" useful. :That's why I rejected the idea of doing Popes as soon as it had occured to me. That and we've already got this list already serving the function for which the templates were designed, and links to the article on each Pope's own page. :Still, if we've got a sizable number of blue I don't think we should be daunted by an even more sizable number of black. A template that's got four live links and three place-holders is less useful to readers than one that's got twenty blue and forty black, since the latter links the article on which it appears to a greater number of related articles. An excess of black only really gets to be a problem when there's so much of it that it hurts the list's readability. Turtle Fan` Now, we don't have anything like those proportions with PMOTUK, but the importance of the office to HT works did make the template seem more worthwhile. By contrast, we have only 3 PMs of France, and of those, I think only one appeared, Dadalier, appeared as a PM in an HT work. Petan is referenced, and DeGaulle has only appeared as a soldier. So I'd suggest first nature of the office, then number of actual articles in relation to OTL numbers, and even then, we can make exceptions if the office is obviously important to HT's work. Any other ideas? TR 19:05, July 12, 2010 (UTC) :Nope, not really. Other than to say we should probably discuss plans for upcomingoffice templates here before creating them for a while, at least until a more comprehensive policy emerges naturally, which it might if we keep coordinating. Turtle Fan 21:06, July 12, 2010 (UTC) British Monarchs Take a look at the template entitled "English, Scottish, and British Monarchs" here at Wikipedia's James I page. Tell me if it is workable. Because I think your inclusion idea is a good one, but it is worth remembering that by the English reckoning, there were monarchs before 1066, and that Scotland had their own line of monarchs before the union of 1603 or 1707. I'm in favor if we basically steal that template. TR 21:59, July 12, 2010 (UTC) :Not bad. We might want to do a little pruning; HT's got nothing that's relevant to pre-Conquest England, so the English section could safely start with William rather than Alfred. Nothing would be lost and something would be gained in terms of making the template more readable and user-friendly. At the same time, every Scots link would be black except Mary and I guess James VI and I, but you're right, they should be represented. :I am wondering how we'd do AH. A section for Miscellaneous AH English monarchs and a section for Miscellaneous AH British monarchs? In the former we've got only RB and in the latter I don't think we have enough monarchs in any one story to justify giving that story its own block. Turtle Fan 22:49, July 12, 2010 (UTC) ::T2G gives a decent streak of the latter: George III, Victoria, Edward VIII, and Charles III. SV gets us Vicky, George V, and Edward. Not great, but not bad. :::Bear in mind that the OTL section will have approximately a zillion. Next to that, strings of three and four could all snuggle in comfortably next to each other. Turtle Fan 02:32, July 13, 2010 (UTC) ::Atlantis gives a solid streak across both lines: Henry VI, Edward IV, Charles II, George III, and Vicky. :::Ah, yes, Atlantis. That's given us quite a few interesting articles affected by this set. I don't remember Victoria in there, though. Turtle Fan 02:32, July 13, 2010 (UTC) ::Given the overlap, perhaps the miscellaneous approach is the best way to go, but we do have options, I think. TR 00:15, July 13, 2010 (UTC) :::Options, true. Those are always good to have. Turtle Fan 02:32, July 13, 2010 (UTC)